Monday, December 15, 2014

Austin resident Terrence Malick has two movies in the works (not counting the big Imax project about the history of the world). One is Knight of Cups set in Los Angeles. It's set to premiere at the Berlin Film Festival, we learned today. And there's a first trailer on Youtube.

Friday, December 5, 2014

I interviewed the screenwriter Bill Wittliff (Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall) for the cover story in this week's Austin Chronicle about his novel The Devil's Backbone. One part of the interview that didn't make it into print involved a picture on his office wall from his photo book Boystown. Right under a photo he took of Willie Nelson and above Wittliff's hat hangs a photo that intrigues.

Back in 1974 I was working on the screenplay for what would become the film A Night in Old Mexico. Part of the action ran through Boystown. I got in a lot of trouble there with my two cameras. But I went back the next night and fell in with a photographer who for $2 will take your picture with your drunk friend and some prostitute. They were all shooting these old Argus C3s. We went on these back streets of Boystown. Here was their little studio. There was a guy in a closet with an old Durst enlarger and three pans of chemicals. They would take a piece of 35mm frame, lay it in the back of their camera, close it, take one picture and run back. This guy would stick them in the Durst, make one little print, run it through the chemicals, wipe it on his pants and dry it with a hair dryer. He’d staple it in a little cardboard frame. Off they’d go to get their two bucks. I looked behind the enlarger and there was a stack of cut 35mm frames. They were all stuck together. I peeled one off, looked at it in the light and knew no gringo could ever get these pictures. I said, “quantos pesos?” They said, “no, no, the Federales.” But I said, “For history, for posterity.” One of them said, “Maybe for money.” I bought that stack of negatives and soaked them in the lavatory in my motel. Even in that 40 negatives there were five or six that I knew were really human. I had a friend who ran a shop in Nuevo Laredo. He went with me the next morning and found one of those guys. I said, “I want to buy your negatives every week.” He’d bring them to my friend. I bought their negatives for a year and a month. Then they got scared. I wound up with somewhere close to 7,000 negatives.

That’s one of the ones I liked the most. They were cracked. Cut. Chemical stains. Smears from wiping it on their jeans to dry. This is before computers. I would sit there and retouch. Not that one. It wasn’t as bad. There were some where I’d take one print and get my retouch deals--not trying to totally clean them up, but just where they were presentable, where a scar or scratch through the picture didn’t interrupt the content. I would turn the TV on to watch a pro game. I’d start when the game started and I’d still be working when it was over.

Look at that picture. That’s his toolbox on the table. No doubt he’s got a pickup parked outside. He’s going home from work. He’s stopped, I don’t think for sex. I think he stopped for a little companionship. She’s somebody who doesn’t want to be owned. She’s turning slightly away. This is how she makes her living. He whole world is in that little change purse. She’s got a gold tooth. If you go close to it, you’ll see there’s one tooth that’s kind of shining. I just think that’s a whole world in that picture. I think that picture is real art. But these photographers are not trying to make art. They’re trying to make a couple of bucks.

It’s a very cool picture just in terms of composition, the toolbox and all that, but the real content is human.

Sunday, October 26, 2014

The folks at the Austin Film Commission were find enough to hire me to
shoot the "step and repeat" at their opening party for the Austin Film
Festival. In case you're unaware of the term, it's the red carpet-ish
procedure where folks step in front of a backdrop, a photo is snapped
and you move on. I brought my able assistant Drew Thomas along and we
shot a few hundred photos of the night.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Since August I've been tailing Andrew Shapter, a former fashion photographer turned documentary filmmaker, through his
aggressive treatment of chemotherapy and radiation aimed at sucker punching cancer. In the midst of it, he's been working to get his magical feature film debut The Teller and the Truth out to the world.

My resulting article is the cover story of the current Austin Chronicle. It's a twofer as my photos run with the story, including this cover image.

Here's how the story begins:

The air outside Texas Oncology in South Austin smells of burnt electricity. The scent lingers as Andrew Shapter is summoned to radiation. White confetti covers the floor outside the room Shapter visits five days a week. It signals that someone – not Shapter – has completed treatment. Two emergency medical technicians steer a man reclined on a stretcher near a sign that reads CAUTION. VERY HIGH RADIATION AREA. Shapter greets the man, and they compare radiation treatments. The man has 35 scheduled, Shap­ter 33. "You can have my extras," the man says with a smile. Inside, Shapter strips his shirt off, dons a white mask molded precisely for his face, opens his laptop to a playlist he's put together for just this moment, and braces himself for the X-ray beam that will burn into his neck. Louis Armstrong sings, "What a Wonderful World."Andrew Shapter, 47, has been many things in this life: a high school class clown who concocted homemade fart devices, an actor, a political junkie toiling in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., a successful fashion photographer, a documentary filmmaker, a husband, a father. Today he focuses on three challenges: Ford, a doe-eyed infant son crawling across the floor and urging his dad to play; a feature film, The Teller & the Truth, five years in the making; and squamous cell carcinoma, a form of skin cancer that claims about 2,500 lives each year. "I had a choice of either going for the fierce fight or the long road," Shapter says. "With my son in mind, I decided I was going to take it hard and fast." The 20-minute radiation treatments are capped by once-a-week, six-hour chemotherapy sessions. On weekends, he crashes. Hard.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Yes, Richard Linklater's long-awaited early '80s college film, tentatively titled That's What I'm Talking About, appears ready to shoot in Austin in October and November. It will "center on the start of something new, with the story about college freshman who are trying to make the baseball team."

Early casting has offers out for the three lead baseball players: Glee’s Blake Jenner, Teen Wolf’s Tyler Hoechlin, and 22 Jump Street’s Wyatt Russell.

And, more important to Austin folk, here's the scoop from the extras casting notice:

SEEKING EXTRAS: male and female, all ethnicities, all ages!!

**THIS IS A PERIOD PIECE from the LATE 70's to early 80's - will require longer hair on all guys and the ability to style to an 80's look on ladies!!

So the "spiritual sequel" to Dazed and Confused (in which most of the high school kids were hippies) will include punkers, kickers, disco ducks and frat daddies. Plus, of course, lots of baseball players.

About Me

My articles and essays have appeared in Texas Monthly, Austin American-Statesman, The Dallas Morning NewsAustin Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and Variety. My novel Evacuation Plan about life in a residential hospice was released in 2007. My photographs have appeared recently in TexasMonthly.com, San Antonio Express-News and The Dallas Morning News. In my spare time, ahem, I also teach writing to graduate students at St. Edward's University and to undergrads at Austin Community College.

What they're saying...

"Tales alternately gentle, dramatic, surrealistic, that collectively affirm the beauty of being alive, even as they acknowledge that all of us face the necessity of making our own 'evacuation plan.' "-- Brad Buchholz, Austin American-Statesman

" The chapters about Matt and the short stories demonstrate O’Connell’s ability to develop sympathetic, true-to-life characters using intriguing details and compelling dialogue. The stories remind us of those times when a brief encounter with a stranger left us wondering about that person’s past. In Evacuation Plan, O’Connell satisfies that curiosity. "-- The Texas Observer

"It was very hard for me to put this book down. It carries us through the deepest meaning in life and most painful, most hopeful memories for a wide range of fascinating characters. Based in a hospice, this book could have easily resorted to cheap sensationalism, or whacked us upside the head with stereotypic melodrama, but instead it was respectful, honest, and tender. The characters will stay with you - you may even recognize some of them within your own life. "-- Award-winning author Carmen Tafolla

"An excellent, thought-provoking diversion from our own inevitable plummet toward the grave, and we highly recommend it to you, the living."-- Wayne Alan Brenner, The Austin Chronicle

"O’Connell has drawn some colourful and believable characters. The material relating to the hospice and terminal care rings true, all the way to reconciliation and forgiving."-- Dr. Roger Woodruff, International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care

"The tales are nicely written, and some are quite compelling; “The Male Nurse,” for one, is a dreamlike reverie."-- Texas Monthly

“Evacuation Plan: A Novel From The Hospice by Joe M. O'Connell is nothing short of remarkable … a novel that walks hand-in-hand with death and yet, somehow, the reader finishes the book feeling inspired to live.” – The Paisano

"A wonderful blend of lives ordinary but with sometimes extraordinary elements. We all share these stories of life in some way, despite moments of harshness or unforgiving pain. There is always a common thread of humanity and ultimately forgiveness to be found, even if it's in the last moment of life."-- Elaine Williams, author of A Journey Well Taken

"Reading Evacuation Plan is akin to unwrapping a series of small perfectly-chosen presents. Both human and humane, The book resembles a modern Spoon River Anthology with its vivid, touching glimpses into the lives of those in and around a hospice."-- Tim McCanlies, screenwriter The Iron Giant, writer/director Secondhand Lions

"In Evacuation Plan Joe O'Connell does for the process of dying what Sherwood Anderson did for middle America in Winesburg, Ohio--he shows us in brief flashes the aching beauty of the grotesque, and shows us how extraordinary small lives and quiet deaths can be."--John Blair, Drue Heinz Literature Prize winning author of American Standard

"Here's a book so rich with stories of the living, so filled with people's bountiful problems, as well as incidents of wry forgiveness, one realizes over and over the circling forces of life's completeness. It's not a sad tale nor a needless feel-good account but a balanced, sometimes comic, affirmation of what is here and what we all know is waiting."-- Carolyn Osborn, award-winning short story writer

"The broken, the hopeful, the frustrated, the clueless, and the forgiving touch one another with words, remembrances, and hands. Inevitably, readers will quietly wonder about their own evacuation plan."-- Will's Texana Monthly

O'Connell's protagonist skillfully navigates under the guise of a writer seeking raw materials for his craft in the stories of the dying, but mines and refines instead the stuff we're all made of. In this finely crafted novel, we come away with much more than the astute observation that many of the best stories begin at the end. But, then again, that notion is also worth a lot.--Jesse Sublett, cancer survivor, rocker and author of Never the Same Again

"Joe O'Connell's Evacuation Plan--this Decameron of the hospice--encompasses a paradox. Death comes for everyone, but death is the only human universal because everyone dies, and witnesses dying, with private, unspeakable shame. Yet there are a few minutes left to speak. As people die, they tell stories which spawn new stories, which remind us that death is agony, a violent struggle, but so is living."-- Debra Monroe, Flannery O'Connor Award winning author of Newfangled and Shambles